Minutes EGRTPS PTA Legislative Committee
2-4-13
Present: Dr. Shubel, Kevin Phillips, Steve Edison, Elizabeth
Lykins, Tina Murua, Lucy Lafleur, Amy Turner Thole, Amy Marlow
Superintendent’s Report
Dr. Shubel reported on a question raised by Legislative
Committee member, Anne Grobel. Will
cutting Young 5’s program make a significant budgetary contribution for the
next fiscal year?
To begin, this school year, Young fives is being offered in
two sections in the same classroom, in the same building by two teachers. Both sections use the same materials and
space. One teacher is a veteran staff
and one is a newer staff, offsetting the salary expense. As of this fiscal year, Young fives works
well within the budget. Looking at next
year, the first in which the starting date will be moved to November 1, still
looks feasible. The program is currently
cost neutral and looks to be the same next year. This means that eliminating it will not be a
great cost savings to the district and academically, it looks as though it will
still be needed and offered next year.
Kevin Phillips reported on the Revenue conference that took
place in January. It looks as though the
foundation allowance per student will remain at the same level. While there is a relief at no cuts, as
expenses go up each year, it is essentially a cut. Also, incentive money may go away and this
year EGRPS is receiving approximately $50 per student in incentive money. The threshold that must be met by districts
to receive incentive money continues to rise, looking like the plan is to offer
incentive money to as few districts as possible. EGRPS has met 7 of 8 incentives for the
2012/2013 school year, according to Steve Edison.
Also, it looks as though the governor is targeting the “At
Risk” monies in the K-12 budget to pay for early childhood education. The legislative committee is concerned
because urban and rural districts will be hardest hit by this cut in funding. EGRPS uses most of its “At Risk” monies for
reading support at the elementary level.
The legislative committee continues to support full funding of early
childhood education, but not at the expense of K-12 funding. Additional revenue must be found to fund
these necessary programs.
House Rep. Lisa Lyons has retained her House Education
Committee Chairmanship. We know that
Representatives Tom Hooker and Winnie Brinks are also on the Committee, which
is good news for public education.
Summary of the Center for Michigan Report on Education
CFM held Education Town Hall meetings all over the state
asking Michigan residents their opinions about public education in
Michigan. They also did random telephone
interviews with Michigan residents, asking them the same questions. While the education town hall participants
were self selected and the telephone interviewees were randomly selected, they
gave similar responses.
Overall, both groups want improved school. Each group felt Michigan has a ways to go to
improve schools but most participants and telephone interviewees felt their own
schools were doing well.
Both groups want increased funding for Early Childhood
Education.
Both groups want more support for and fair evaluation of
teachers.
Both groups want to invest in community schools, even paying
higher taxes to solve the problems.
Neither group felt that more choice or more online learning
was at the top of the list for how to achieve results.
Governor Snyder’s State of the State Address:
Governor Snyder placed the EAA—Education Achievement
Authority on his priority list. This is
the brand new state wide district that has the mandate to overtake the bottom
3% of schools. This means that over the
years, the take-over will continue up the ladder and the state will run more
and more schools. Many are concerned
about local control. This raises alarms
for any public school advocate.
The governor raised three areas for increased funding:
Children’s dental care, Early childhood education (Great Start) and early
impact mental health services.
He promises that the Education Summit in April will focus on
school safety and early detection of mental illness.
Elizabeth Lykins reported on her presentation with Rockford
parent, Christie Ramsey, to Friends of Kent County Schools in January. There was a turnout of over 220 people who
were from all over West Michigan. Eight
presentations are being scheduled over the next few weeks to try to increase
the number of parent groups similar to our Legislative Committee.
Action:
Elizabeth continued with an action plan for our
district. We will need to get parents
motivated to action over the next few months.
We need to not fatigue. We need
to streamline communication to parents through the school buildings. Dr. Shubel and Tina Murua both spoke to the
fact that the PTA Council is reviewing communication in today’s meeting to
ensure that communication is streamlined for parents.
Currently, we will continue to engage parents through
newsletters and PTA meetings. We will
put the main points on the blog and refer to it in the newsletters.
Current Concerns of the legislative Committee
We will need parents to review the action below and decide
which issues move them to action, but at the same time, impress upon parents
how the bills work in concert and are therefore of concern to us all. The bills below do not support our schools or
our community. They are all burdens on
communities. We need to ask for more
support of our communities and less support of corporate interests in
education.
1.
EAA—Education Achievement Authority This is the brand new state wide district
that has the mandate to overtake the bottom 3% of schools. This means that over the years, the take-over
will continue up the ladder and the state will run more and more schools. Many education advocates are concerned about
local control. There is concern that the
EAA would not have to test their students which raises alarms of whether the
students would be receiving adequate education.
2.
Mega Schools of Choice bill This bill revisits all of the charter
expansion, cyber school expansion and expanding the entities that can start
schools, including corporations starting schools for their employees, etc. Education advocates are concerned about this
because Michigan already has some of the highest choice offerings in the nation
with little or no research showing that the amount of choice offered is
benefitting Michigan. We continue to
advocate stopping this legislation. Too
much. Too fast. No research.
These new schools also do not have to address special education
students.
3.
Unbundling funding for education We are most concerned about this strategy for
funding schools. While we still would
get the foundation grant per pupil, if the pupil takes a class outside the
district, the district would be held responsible for keeping track of and
giving the other entity a portion of the foundation grant. This would allow mobile students to leave the
district and take money with them while leaving more expensive special
education students behind.
